I have been an odd combination of busy and relaxed these last few weeks, I think it must have something to do with the lovely gardens around our house. I’ve been thinking of all the lovely things to make when I finally get some time to do it!

Crochet is still my creative crux at the moment, it is so easy to pick it up and do a few stitches or take it on a plane. However I recently developed a huge problem working on my newest blanket, currently dubbed The Olive Blanket:

Everytime I get through half a row it develops a furry growth. I was able to wiggle a little piece out and Felix was kind enough to model it so I could take a close up shot for you:

But my camera decided it had other ideas about the colour. It’s much nicer than pictured here.

Don’t let this lovely photograph fool you! You didn’t miss anything, the Star Anise Blanket is most definitely not finished yet. In fact, it hasn’t gotten any bigger since my last update. Gosh I didn’t realise it was so long ago!

No, this Star Anise Blanket is folded up neatly and smally to be packed into a box for a few weeks. We’re moving house!

For the next few weeks I can look at these pictures and think how lovely it is, and let that motivate me to create some more hexgons in between packing and un-packing boxes. I’m sure I’ll find the time! 😛

Woolly loveliness.

I’ve had to pack up all my sewing things so there won’t be any new clothes for a little while. To minimise crafty withdrawals, I’ve put together a crochet travel kit:

And mapped out the point when the Star Anise Blanket got packed up:

Still lots to do.

Of course, me being me I actually have two crochet travel kits. There is this one, and another one that is a small box stuffed with at least 5 other projects. Plus there will be wool shops on the way. So I won’t be running out of crochet expressionism!

Discovering how AWESOME being crafty is has a snowball effect. You start making copious amount of stuff. Then other people start doing it too. Then you all think it would be fun to get a group going and Shandii of Shandii Craft starts a Facebook Group for Blankets!!

Sadly, your Blankets cannot join due to their inanimate nature. But YOU can! To join our blanket-making snowball and do some hookin’ and a stitchin’ along with us, message me on Facebook and let me know.

In Shandii’s small group, we’re each creating a blanket of our own choice. You can pick a blanket you’ve just started or start a new one, it’s all fun!

My blanket, I had to make some decisions there. I found a lovely pattern I’d like to make, but *DISASTER* we have a current freeze on yarn-buying in my house! So I headed to my Yarn Cupboard and found my old Blanket Polka yarn.

Colours so pretty.

I hadn’t realised I never got very far with it at all. Here’s one of only two spots:

This scarf is so huge, I can lay it across our queen size bed as a foot/Felix blanket. This scarf is sooo huge, curiosity got the better of me and for the first time ever I measured one of my completed crochet projects.

What’s more, it’s mega warm. I actually was in a light sweat while weaving in the ends. I bought this wool on eBay from a lovely lady, and the skeins had little labels with the names of the sheep the wool came from. The outer white stripes are from Kelly, the black wool stripes are from Curly, and the middle white stripe came from Pixie. Sadly the grey stripes didn’t come with a name tag, so I named the mystery sheep Storm.

Storm and Curly’s wool are still tacky with the sheeps’ natural lanolin. My hands felt so soft at the end of those rows and it seems to be marvellous at retaining warmth.

As it grew on my lap, Sweetheart kept putting it over himself. I think he likes it. It makes us both giggle how monstrously large this scarf is, but there’s absolutely no question we are warm when we wear it!

Things are progressing on the Star Anise Blanket front. Lucky it’s getting colder, because a few weeks ago it was just to warm to stitch the hexagons together with the growing mass of blanket on my lap.

It’s exciting. It’s almost at a usable size now! And the points! It’s really coming together!

Bad puns aside, I did make a very good point to myself. My plan to join all my next round of blues wasn’t going to work that well as I realised I had to join all the blues with blue, and the browns and greens were going to be joined with green. The the creams would be joined with cream. Well there was some logic to it anyway. Point is I made a point.

But that’s not all! While this exciting addition was being made, the house was in disarray. Sweetheart turned the house into a photography studio and we had the amazingly talented make up artist Dave Reid and lovely model Anne Duffy over for a cup of tea. Then I couldn’t help but to get involved in Sweetheart’s fun 😀

I’m sure the Star Anise Blanket just become the most popular crochet blanket on the Interwebs. In the meantime though, I promised Anne that next time we shoot there will be more blanket to keep her warm!

I’m sure the question on everyone’s lips is: Has she forgotten about the Blanket Scrabble?

No, my pretties, I have not. Check out my stack above! It’s going strong, and I’ve almost completed all the score tiles. I’ve settled on what colour to use for the non-scoring tiles and what colour to join them all with, and in my excitement I went ahead and joined some:

As Star Anise Blanket lies about the lounge room unfinished and aloof, it has begun to attract compliments from our house guests lucky enough to see it. Progress has been slow recently, but it’s now at a size that’s a bit hard to miss.

I’ve decided to finish all the hexagons for the next round before I attach them, and this is proving to be a test of my resolve. I have about 30 ready to go and it’s so tempting to give in and just attach a few… But no! I must be strong.

In the meantime, I have settled on the final direction. I will stick to my design I worked out a few months ago, and I’ve found the right combination to surround the star – the neutral beige and white combo above. What do you think?

I can’t wait to finish this, I’m going to have a beautiful piece when it’s done! 😀